Chapter 1
Break-In News
Jane ran down the deserted street. The music coming from the mansion behind stopped, but she had no time to turn—she kept running. She had what she needed. There was no point in slowing down, no going back. What was done was done.
Sirens wailed, red and blue lighting up the usually quiet neighborhood. Jane had to hurry up.
She hadn’t expected the police to show up that fast. Maybe someone was watching her, maybe this time she’d screwed up, maybe she’d missed an angle. What if they were after her? She’d have to start a new life … again. Jane figured these thoughts wouldn’t get her far, so she cleared her head and concentrated on getting to her car.
She slowed down and began to walk instead of running.
Three blocks later, Jane could finally stop. She looked up at the hill and listened. The sirens had paused, but she could see the flashing lights in the semi-darkness. The police had arrived too fast. Something was definitely wrong.
Jane glanced at her phone. The feed from the mansion’s security cameras was glitching again. She found that weird, but it didn’t matter—she would lose it any minute. She’d been promised the live streaming only for an hour, half of which was put on a loop so she wouldn’t appear on it and no one would know she was there. Maybe the whole hacking thing hadn’t worked as well as usual. Jane wouldn’t have known anyway—her knowledge about technology was poor.
The sky was clearing, the sun about to rise above beautiful Los Angeles. Jane took a moment to enjoy the morning air and to feel the warm touch of the first rays of sunshine. She smiled with satisfaction, thinking about her achievement, and unlocked her car, which waited parked on the street.
Jane opened the trunk and quickly changed out of the long cocktail dress she was wearing and into comfy short jeans and a black t-shirt. She took off the high-heel shoes and put on her favorite sneakers. Tightening her long, indigo-black hair into a ponytail, side bangs falling on her left, she put on her sunglasses, tucked a small gun into her belt, hopped in, and drove off.
Driving at the speed limit with the streets almost empty, as they always were in the early hours of the day, Jane admired the peace and quiet of the neighborhood. She saw several people walking their dogs sleepily, and others strolling to their cars, probably going to work. No one had a clue what had happened during the night. No one was in a hurry, and neither was Jane, not anymore.
Turning the radio on, she kept driving. The city was waking up. As small shops opened their doors for customers, more and more people appeared on the streets, walking on the beautiful sidewalks with palm trees on each side. Jane loved L.A. She loved the ocean, the beach alleys, the city life, everything. She didn’t want to leave it. Not after so many new beginnings. L.A. was the city she’d stayed in longer than any other, and she didn’t plan on abandoning it. She had finally found the place she wanted to stay.
Rethinking the last night made her sick, though. Why had the police come so quickly? They should’ve arrived at least fifteen minutes later. What had gone wrong? Had she made a mistake? Jane was sure she’d done everything as planned. But still, she had the feeling something wasn’t right.
Her first stop was an odd-looking pawnshop. Jane parked in front of it, stepped out of the car calmly, pushed the door open, and went inside.
A short, round man jumped at the sight of her and welcomed her with a stretched arm, as if expecting a handshake.
“Well, well, well, Jane Blake!” he said slowly from behind the counter. “What do you have for me this time, beautiful?”
Jane pretended she didn’t see his hand, and reached into her purse. She took out a red velvet bag and slammed it on the counter.
“Three-carat diamonds,” she said coldly, and removed her sunglasses. Her brilliantly green eyes narrowed, piercing him intensely.
“Maybe we should take this to the back …” he said, hurrying to lock the front door. She followed him to the back room.
Walking slowly behind him, Jane looked at the piles of broken old stuff. There was barely free space to move. They passed a few dozen things from the ’80s, all covered with a thick layer of dust. The pawnshop was an obvious front for something very much illegal. Jane never knew what exactly Garry Skinner was dealing with, and she didn’t care. What mattered to her was that he always bought whatever she gave him.
“Now, where did you say you got these babies from?” He was examining the diamonds.
“I didn’t. Will you buy those, or should I go to—”
“Do not even mention that name in my shop!” Garry said loudly, looking offended.
Jane smirked.
Garry didn’t ask anything else, but he took a bit more time than usual checking the stones.
“Fine cut, really fine,” he murmured under his nose.
Jane was getting bored, glancing at her phone every ten seconds. She’d been up all night partying with the Jeffersons in that mansion, doing all she could to get a hold of these diamonds and a small golden statue, which she preferred to keep to herself. She had planned this for a month, and now that it was over, she needed to go home and get some sleep. At least she hoped it was over.
“So?” Jane insisted. She was feeling her eyelids getting heavier with each minute in the misty, weird-smelling room.
“Okay, Blake, these are rare. I actually don’t know if I have enough dough for all of them. Can we think of something?” Garry said, a greasy tone in his voice.
“Skinner, we’ve played this game for years. Just give me what you’ve got,” Jane said irritably.
“Ouch, I’m hurt, Blake.” He acted offended. “Don’t be like that, Hun. Here, this is all I have. Honestly. And I’ll owe you big time.”
“Yeah, right. You already owe me several big times.” Jane puffed and took the large duffle bag he handed her.
Skinner looked happy with the deal, and only nodded with a big smile on his face.
Jane didn’t even check if there was money in the bag before she hurried out of the shop.
She drove home at last.
Jane’s house was a broad, modern, two-story masterpiece with a huge garden, a pool, and a bit higher fence than usual. Even though she lived alone and had just the one vehicle, she had a two-car garage. She parked her matte black muscle car, which she’d bought a couple of years ago and absolutely loved.
Jane grabbed the duffle bag and strolled to the back door. She lazily typed the security code and went in.
Passing by the kitchen, she headed straight to the living room. Inside, the house was nicely furnished, sparkling clean, almost as if no one lived there. There was an open laptop and remote control on the coffee table in front of a large gray couch.
Jane threw the duffle bag next to the couch and glanced at her laptop, as the screen glitched for a second. She thought about the security feed on her phone doing the same, but she quickly decided it was nothing and turned on the seventy-two-inch wall-mounted TV. The morning news was about to start.
After heading to the kitchen to pour herself a well-deserved whiskey, Jane returned to the couch. She rarely watched TV, but this morning’s news was very important, and she couldn’t miss it even though she was exhausted.
After several boring reports and a lot of unneeded and uninteresting political babble, which almost made Jane doze off, the long-awaited “Breaking news” started.
“And now with the breaking news. There was a situation last night in the mansion of well-known businessman and entrepreneur Eduard Jefferson,” the anchor said excitedly “Let’s go live to our reporter on location, Maggie Reed. Hello, Maggie! Do we hear each other?”
“Hi, Jenna! I’m here at the front gate of Mr. Jefferson’s mansion, where police were called in the early morning hours. So far, the police have shared with us that the call was made by Mr. Jefferson’s oldest son, reporting a robbery. Brad Jefferson shared with the police that his younger brother had been having a party, giving the thief an opportunity. But after arriving at the crime scene and examining the mansion, the police arrested several of the guests on drug charges.”
She continued, “But that’s not the reason I’m here. During the early investigation, the police found evidence connecting Brad to the murder of Gianni Moer. We remind you that Gianni was the twenty-two-year-old student from New York who came on vacation to Los Angeles, and was brutally murdered two months ago. Unfortunately, the police had no suspects, which led to the recent closure of the investigation. But an arrest has been made today. We will keep you posted on any new developments.” The reporter looked around for a second, and when a man stepped into view, she continued, “Here with me is Detective Hunt, who will give us a statement …”
Jane turned off the TV. Her job was done. All had turned out the way she’d planned. She drank what was left from the whiskey and climbed the stairs to her bedroom.
Jumping in her king-size bed, she fell asleep almost immediately.
Jane woke up fully rested and refreshed. Stretching, she dressed, took her gun from underneath the pillow, tucked it in her belt, and headed to the kitchen to make herself a coffee, then walked through the glass door of the living room to her favorite spot of the house: the garden. She realized she had slept through the whole day.
The sunset was beautiful, and Jane always loved to watch it from one of the sunbeds near the pool. Grabbing a cigarette box from the small table next to her, she stared at it for a moment. Smoking wasn’t a habit for her, but sometimes she puffed one. And after such a success, she decided she deserved the guilty pleasure and lit up. She’d nearly made herself forget about the possible mistakes.
By the time Jane finished with her coffee and one or two more “guilty pleasures,” the sun was gone and she had to stand up to turn on the lights.
She went to refill her cup with some more hot coffee and to grab her score—the money and the statue. When she got back to the sunbed, she simply left her mug on the table and, carrying the duffle bag, walked around the pool, passed by the barbecue, and walked across the lawn to the fence. Looking around suspiciously, she opened up a carefully hidden lid: the entrance to her bunker.
Jane quickly carried the money into the spacious bunker and dropped it near the bed, then put the statue on the table, admiring it for a second before walking to a safe hidden at the end of the room. Typing a long code, she opened it. Ignoring the stacks of money, Jane reached in and grabbed an old folder full of documents. Then she hurried back outside.
She returned to her previous spot on the sunbed and started looking through the stack of papers, putting most of the medical and bank statements back in and setting the folder aside. Her interest was in a series of newspaper clippings. She leaned forward, took a sip from her coffee, and stared at a cropped article with a photo of a man—a murder victim.
Jane had reread that article, and the many others in the stack, maybe a million times. She knew the text perfectly well by now, but she still took the physical copies out when she had the chance. This middle-aged, dark-haired man with sunken brown, almost black eyes, and a fake identity was driving Jane crazy.
The man in the photo always triggered feelings that she didn’t know how to cope with. Hopelessness. Fear. Anxiety due to the misinformation, the fact that there were far more questions than answers.
Staring at his expression, which was full of anger and madness, Jane remembered every word he’d told her before collapsing dead in front of her eyes, her innocent, seven-year-old eyes.
“Your real mom and dad want to see you. Come with me,” he’d said anxiously, grabbing her hand.
“But I’m going to my parents now,” she’d answered with confusion.
“Oh no, those are not your real parents. Come!”
And then, Jane remembered vividly, a terrible bang pierced her sensitive ears. She held her hands tight over them to stop the pain from this unknown sound. A second later, the seven-year-old understood what had hurt her ears—a gunshot, and it had come from right behind her. Turning, she could see every bit of the blood dripping slowly from the bullet wound in the man’s chest.
Jane still experienced the terror she’d felt when she realized he was dead and there was someone else behind her. Even after twenty years, she could still feel the soft touch of his two cold hands on her shoulders, how scared she was to turn around and see who it was. She relived the horror of thinking that she was next.
But just then, when Jane thought she would soon be lying dead next to the man on the ground, a low voice spoke in her ear with unmistakable worry and kindness. “Go, sweetie. Go home and forget about what you saw.” This new man stroked her arms and continued, “Are you strong enough to keep this to yourself? Can you keep a secret?”
The seven-year-old nodded and said with a feeble but certain voice, “Yes.”
“You are extraordinary. Never forget that,” the man whispered in her ear. As he caressed her hair, her hairband fell off, but she didn’t turn around to look at him—she was too afraid.
“Now go. Go home. Run!” he urged her.
And she ran. She was afraid to look back. She kept going, holding her eyes on the road, but her child’s curiosity was getting stronger. Jane wanted to turn and see him, but she didn’t. Not until she was about to round the corner did she let herself glance back. But it was too late. The man with the cold hands had disappeared.
His freezing touch haunted her at night sometimes, years later. The memory triggered the sensation of his hands on Jane’s shoulders as if he were there. To this day, Jane didn’t know if he had saved her life or taken away the life she should’ve had—with her biological parents. Year after year, she had searched for that man and her real mother and father, hoping she would get to the truth, hoping she would understand what had happened to her. But right at the moment she’d thought she had something, she was forced to stop digging.
Jane’s eyes were shut tightly, concentrating, trying to remember some piece of evidence that she might’ve missed. But it was all the same as before. If only she had known then the tricks she did now. She had taught herself how to observe and remember even the slightest details. But back then she was just a kid. A kid walking home after school, scared of what her parents would say about the note from the teacher—bad behavior. Scared if her father would beat her up again, scared if her grandmother would accuse of being stupid and irresponsible. And suddenly this kid had to grow up fast. This kid started answering her own question of why her family was treating her so badly—they weren’t her family at all. Then she promised herself to find out the truth.
Why was she doing this to herself? She’d relived this memory too often over the last few months. It was getting harder and harder to gain control over her own psyche.
Jane had investigated that man’s murder since it had happened. She had been searching for her real parents since that moment too. But though she’d found definite evidence she was adopted, she hadn’t found any concrete information about who her biological parents were. Yes, when she was fourteen, she had the pleasure of telling her adoptive father that she knew she was adopted, and for the first and last time she saw defeat in his eyes. He admitted he wasn’t her biological father, but he refused to give her information about her real parents. He told her he didn’t know. And in the next few years, no matter how hard Jane tried to get the information out of the whole family, nobody said a thing. Instead, her adoptive mother and grandmother changed their versions so often that Jane couldn’t distinguish the truth between the lies. If there was any truth at all.
Jane had never identified the murdered man in the alley, nor the one with the cold hands. She didn’t even know why they were there in the first place. How was she, especially at just seven years old, connected to that gruesome incident?
The event in the alley had shaped everything. It was the reason Jane was who she was, lived the way she did, knew all she knew. She had her way with people. Manipulating and deceiving were second nature to her. Her search had made her cold and determined to find the truth no matter what. Many people owed her favors, some of them a bit questionable. But still, she had no luck with this case, the case that had messed her up so badly. The reason she was forced to grow up too fast.
The words of her mentor were echoing in Jane’s head. “It is up to you—will this make you, or will this break you? The choice is yours.”
“What if it did both?” she used to answer.
It sure had.
How sorry she was that she’d never hear Ben’s voice again. The man who’d taught her everything she knew, the one who’d brought her to L.A., the teacher, the critic, the mentor—he was all. And he was gone.
Gone because of her. Gone because of this very case, gone while trying to help her solve it. And the memories started involuntary flowing again. Jane closed her eyes and saw him enter through the door of this house, covered in blood. She had waited for him all night, but she had fallen asleep at some point, and the door woke her up. She’d known he was meeting someone in private—he had refused to take her with him, even though she was sure it was about the man in the alley. Jane remembered so vividly when he collapsed on the ground, helpless. Her heart raced a mile a minute. She ran to him, ready to give him first aid, but she saw the gunshot wound. Trembling, she grabbed him with all her strength and seated him in the back of the car.
Even while remembering it, Jane could feel all the emotions she’d felt back then. She was terrified; she couldn’t lose him. Tears had started rolling on her cheeks uncontrollably, but she had to drive as fast as possible, she needed to reach the hospital before it was too late. And his voice echoed in Jane’s head as if he were next to her.
“Promise me you’ll let this go.”
“I can’t”, she said.
“If Vanessa and I ever meant something to you, promise me you’ll drop that investigation. You have a long life ahead. Live it. Promise me, kid, promise me. Give me your word, Jane,” he said, gasping for breath.
“I-I promise. You have my word,” she said.
He stopped talking, and she knew he was gone but without looking at the back seat she continued to drive.
Now, Jane opened her eyes, feeling the tears on her face. She needed to stop doing all of this to herself. But the visions kept running in front of her eyes. First, it had been Vanessa, then him. Both of them killed because of her.
She remembered when the doctors had told her he was dead. Her whole world had crumbled yet again. She couldn’t even cry, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe—she’d just stared at the doctor soundlessly and walked back to her car. The pain was too much.
And then Jane experienced the month after the funeral in a matter of minutes. All the nights spent in the bunker with bottles of vodka and whiskey, all the panic attacks, the anxiety, all the pills that the psychiatrist had prescribed, all the hopelessness. She was weak, useless.
Jane made an effort to stop visualizing this dark past of hers. She opened her eyes once again and looked down at the papers in her hands. And she remembered the note from Vanessa, Ben’s wife, written on a napkin with her own blood. It contained just a few letters: Mor …
More what? Jane wondered. Or was it a place, or a name? Maybe a company? Part of an address?
She felt the anxiety taking root again.
Jane literally shook off the emotions, threw the newspaper clippings away in anger, and stood up. She needed a drink, and went to the kitchen to switch out her coffee mug for a glass of whiskey. A full glass of whiskey.
She tried to persuade herself to stop with this craziness. Two years ago, she’d promised to quit, and yet she still took out these clippings once in a while, and it felt like she was on the edge of starting again. Not thinking what had happened when she got close the last time, she was like an addict who knows the addiction is killing them slowly but still takes the next dose.
Jane had to stop digging. She’d made a promise, given her word.
And so what if she never knew who her parents were? And so what if she never knew who that man was? What if she never could close that first case? What, really, was the big deal? Jane had investigated so many cases, had helped a lot of people to find their closure. What if she never found hers? What would it change if she did? She was doing pretty good—crazy rich, in fact. From a common thief, she’d built herself into a con artist, a grifter, and occasionally a PI for people whose cases were too difficult for the police. What difference would it make if she knew the truth? It wouldn’t bring back what she’d lost. It wouldn’t change her. Not now, not ever.
And yet Jane couldn’t let go, no matter what she’d promised.
She downed her whiskey while collecting the newspaper clippings from the ground and putting them back in the folder. Then she sat again on the sunbed, sinking deep into her thoughts, staring blankly at the dark sky.
The night was peaceful; the leaves of the palm trees in Jane’s garden stood still, and the fresh air was becoming a bit chilly. Only the traffic far behind the house interrupted the silence with its river-like sound.
Jane was done with all her current “projects,” and she found herself wondering what would come next. She rarely knew what would happen the next day, and she loved that. The constant changes and new “jobs” brought the dynamic and mystery she needed. Her life was always surprising her.
Thinking about surprises, Jane felt she was being watched. A tingling feeling on her back had been bothering her from the moment she’d set foot in Jefferson’s mansion. But it wasn’t possible—Jane’s home security system was an advanced piece of technology, heavily protective. If someone had gotten in, the alarms would’ve been insanely loud.
She stood up, pulled out the small handgun from her belt, and looked around. There was no movement in the house, nor the garden.
Deciding she was being paranoid, she sat back. Jane was always security conscious, maybe a bit more than necessary. Perhaps the vivid memory had provoked her—that was what she convinced herself, at least.
Returning to the pointless staring at the sky, Jane ignored her gut feeling.
